


Safe Harbor

by skatergirl83



Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Character swap, Choose Your Own Ending, Coda, Episode: s03e15 Coda, F/M, Kathryn Janeway's 17 deaths, Prompt Fic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-30
Updated: 2020-05-20
Packaged: 2021-03-02 00:33:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,937
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23936152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skatergirl83/pseuds/skatergirl83
Summary: It wasn't Janeway's father who showed up for her in Coda.Choose your own ending.
Relationships: Chakotay & Kathryn Janeway, Chakotay/Kathryn Janeway, Kathryn Janeway/Justin Tighe
Comments: 5
Kudos: 29





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Manalyzer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Manalyzer/gifts).



> Thanks to Manalyzer for the prompt, and Cheile for the brainstorming and mini beta.

One life to live? Or nine? 

Janeway was beginning to wonder if she was part cat, given how many times she’d died and come back to life on this away mission. Figuring out why the crew couldn’t see her seemed like small potatoes compared to avoiding the Grim Reaper again. At least Chakotay was alive and back where he belonged. No worries there. 

The glowing swath of light beyond the engineering doors, on the other hand,  _ was _ something to worry about. “Oh, what now?” She muttered. 

A figure emerged through the light, a human man, wearing the gold Starfleet uniform of a decade past. She found herself throwing caution to the wind and stepping closer to get a better look. 

The man’s runner’s build was familiar, but his face was one she’d never forgotten: Dark blue eyes. Tousled black hair. Pale skin. A square jaw that showed the barest hint of the five o’clock shadow that had never gone away, no matter how closely he’d shaved. 

In that very instant it was as if a hull breach had blown all of the oxygen from the room. Her mouth fell open and her lips formed around the name of a person she’d never expected to see again.

“Justin?”

He closed the distance between them in a few short strides, sweeping her into an embrace and laying his lips on hers. Janeway thought the heat of his kiss would burn her to the ground. It was heaven.

And it was confusing as hell. She recoiled; It didn’t matter how much she wanted him to be alive, she’d spent fifteen years knowing that his broken body was frozen under hundreds of meters of water on a long-distant planet. One did not get any more  _ dead _ than the man in front of her, who now looked at her with a lover’s gaze.

“God, I’ve missed you,” he exclaimed, a smile lighting his face like the sun. Heat radiated off his hand as he stroked her cheek. Her blood ran cold.

What the hell was going on?


	2. Chapter 2

The Delta Quadrant had taught Kathryn Janeway many lessons. But one stood out: hardly anything was ever what it seemed. ‘Friendly’ species often had hostile intentions. ‘Wormholes’ usually turned out to be anomalies that waylaid Voyager for days. A long-gone fiancee who held her in his arms was probably not Justin Tighe, back from the dead.

If that was the case, what was he?

“Who are you?” she asked, eyeing him skeptically. 

Tighe guffawed. “I kiss you like that and you don’t remember me? Okay, now I’m offended,” he answered, smiling in mock indignation.

A growing sense of betrayal tainted her curiosity. “Justin Tighe died in a shuttle crash on Tau Ceti Prime,” she countered, her voice tense but even-keeled. “It was fifteen years ago. I don’t know who or what you are, but you had no right to do what you just did. Let go of me.” 

He blinked, then laughed again. “Short Stuff, it’s _me_.”

 _Short Stuff._ The nickname he’d given her because the top of her head barely came up to his chin. The moniker had been inelegant and infantile, and yet she’d loved it.

He reached down to stroke her hair. Janeway swatted his hand away.

“You’re dead. You’re not the man I was engaged to. You’re a hallucination, a figment of my imagination. An alien, even,” she rationalized. “Are you some kind of alien being?”

He leaned down and spoke in her ear. Janeway shivered. “Sssh,” he soothed. “I know it’s hard. I didn’t exactly want to die in a shuttle crash either.”

Her head snapped up. “Is that what you’re trying to tell me? That I’m dead?” 

Tighe looked down at her, the expression on his face somber. “’Til Valhalla, Captain.” 

The ship seemed to list under her feet as she remembered the last time she’d heard those words, and her hand flew up to touch the four small discs on her collar. 

_He hadn’t been popular, but he’d been respected. That meant the hall was packed at Lieutenant Justin Tighe’s memorial service._

_Colleagues shared stories. Admirals lauded him with praise. His family had been too far away to make the ceremony, so she was the one presented with the full set of pips from his posthumous promotion. Her eyes were blurry from tears dammed up and desperate to be shed. Her ears were seemingly deafened by one cacophonous, ever-repeating thought:_ This can’t be happening. 

_When it was over, Janeway waited at the front of that small auditorium at Headquarters, her fingers clenched around the small black box containing the tiny metal discs. In front of her, Justin’s brothers- and sisters-in-arms filed out, those nearly 50 Starfleet Rangers in attendance, each pausing in front of the empty burial pod to quietly speak their three sacred words:_

_“‘Til Valhalla, Brother.”_

With wide eyes, Janeway looked up at Tighe. “I took your pips,” she apologized. 

He smiled gently. “From my memorial service. I remember. I was there.” 

“Then you know that I’ve worn them ever since you died. With each promotion I just added my new ones. I’ve never told anyone.” Her face fell, her shoulders slumping under the weight of emotional burdens she’d carried for so many years. “There were so many things we’d planned to do together. I wanted to have you with me, if only in spirit.”

Tighe ran his thumb over the duller ones of the four pips on her collar. “I _was_ with you in spirit,” he breathed, and leaned down and kissed her again, her body rising as he pulled her against him. “And now we never have to be apart,” he whispered. 

Now she pulled him tight, as though she could keep him from slipping away from her again by the sheer force of her embrace. It felt so good. He felt so good. It was like being a 24 year-old Ensign again.

That realization _didn’t_ feel so good. The four pips in question suddenly seemed to weigh as much as her entire ship, its whole crew and all their dreams. Janeway’s legs felt weak. 

She gently disentangled herself from the embrace and retreated back into her guarded, rational and logical self. “You may be dead, but I’m alive and my crew is trying to find me. I have to get back to them.”

The corners of Tighe’s mouth turned down, marring his handsome face. “Kathryn, I love you for your brilliant mind, but death isn’t something you can think your way out of.” He glanced and gestured in the direction of B’Elanna and Harry, who were running a scan at one of the consoles. “No Federation technology can find us. It’s a lost cause.” 

Janeway crossed her arms. “A lost cause, hmm? Like how trying to save you from the Cardassians when you’d broken your ankle on Urtea II was a ‘lost cause?’”

Tighe mirrored her stance. Janeway recognized them settling into their old pattern of arguments from the nine months they’d known each other. “I tried to go back,” he explained. “I wanted to be with you more than I’ve ever wanted anything in my life. I never found a way.” With one hand he reached down and tilted her chin up, looking at her with earnest longing. “But we have each other back.” 

Janeway gently took his wrist and removed his hand from her chin, allowing her neck to return to a more natural angle. She crossed her arms once again. “Let’s say, for argument’s sake, you’re right and we’re both dead. In that case, where’s Dad? You both died in that crash.”

His hands opened, palms-up. “I don’t know, Kathryn. My grandfather was the only person who met me when I crossed over. I can only assume that the deceased person we loved the most in the universe is the one who comes when it’s our time.” 

Her stomach twisted. Who had she loved more, Justin or her father? It was the question she’d never been able to answer, had never wanted to answer, and now that answer was staring her in the face. Literally.

Guilt smothered her like ashes on a fire. 

He rested a hand lightly on her shoulder. “I’ve seen my family since I died, and I think you’ll see your father. Soon,” he comforted, clearly sensing her doubt. “This phase of existence is a place of everlasting joy, Kathryn. It’s not something that can be described, it has to be experienced. But I can tell you that I’m happy. Even happier, now that you’re with me. Isn’t that enough?”

She looked over at B’Elanna and Harry again and felt a swell of pride as she watched the two friends who had once been sworn enemies. A bittersweet smile crossed Janeway’s face, and she turned back and answered Tighe. 

“No. It’s not enough. Love, life, Starfleet--I want it all, Justin. I always have, you should know that.” He opened his mouth to respond but she laid a finger on his lips. “My crew is looking for me. They will find a way to get me back, and when they do--I’m taking you with me.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chakotay throws an unexpected wrench into Tighe's plans for, er, with Janeway.
> 
> Comments are always appreciated!

“You just _hate_ seeing someone else in your chair,” Tighe mused, leaning casually against the bulkhead next to the briefing room.

Janeway, taking her eyes off the science station’s display, followed Tighe’s gaze to the two large seats in the center of the bridge. Chakotay sat to starboard, Tuvok to port, and Janeway herself was nowhere to be seen. That was the order of things for gamma shift.

Only it wasn’t gamma shift, it was alpha shift. Her shift. This was the new normal for a _Voyager_ without Captain Janeway, and the thought left her unsettled. She glanced back at Tighe.

“I’ve only been out of that chair for two days, Justin,” she answered smoothly, tempering her worries. “If there’s anything I hate, it’s that I’m invisible on my own ship. Meanwhile, my crew is looking for me and I can’t figure out how to help them.” _Or help myself_ , she added.

Janeway turned back to the console. Tighe stood and stepped between it and Janeway, and she instantly recoiled.

“Excuse m—“

“Kathryn, stop.”

She scowled, an exasperated sigh escaping her lips.

Tighe’s eyes were as dark as a midnight sky and they bored into hers. “Kathryn, there’s no reason to help them. There’s nothing they or you can do. The only thing that really matters is saying goodbye and letting go. For your own sake.”

Her eyes opened wide in disbelief. _Let go?_ This man had been tortured by the Cardassians for three days only to escape, chomping at the bit to return to the front lines. As far as she knew, the word ‘quit’ wasn’t in his vocabulary.

Janeway inclined her head. “May I ask how an acute case of mortality gave you a chronic case of apathy?”

Tighe barked out a laugh. “I always did love your acerbic sense of humor.” His grin settled into an easy smile that made her think of a poker player who held a straight flush. “But you have it backwards. I’m chronically dead. So are you. And I’m not the least bit apathetic about wanting to be with you again. Forever. I’d hope you feel the same.”

His body was very nearly pressed against hers now, and the closeness made her throat constrict. His unblinking look was so penetrating, Janeway wondered if he was trying to read her mind. 

She stepped to the side and looked back down at the console.

“Kathryn, would you at least take a break from searching for yourself?” he pleaded. “You’ve spent two days ignoring me. I don’t even know what’s happened to you in the fifteen years since the accident.”

This comment made her head snap up. “I thought you said you were at your funeral? That you’d seen me, seen my life since you died.”

“I _was_ at my funeral,” he explained, his speech measured and calm. “But I left shortly afterward. The longer I stayed with you, the harder it seemed to be for you to accept that your father and I were gone.” He paused for breath, and she could see him hesitating about what he wanted to say. “Kathryn, I know you tried to end your life.” 

She felt mortified, and she stiffened. “No. I didn’t try. I only wanted to.”

His response was immediate, his fists clenched as he spoke. “Do you think that’s what it looked like to me, seeing you walk out into the snow like that when there was nothing I could do to stop you? I grew up on a ball of ice, remember? I knew what you were doing to yourself!”

Mouth open in shock, she wanted to reach out and comfort him but he turned away, his voice now quiet. “I realized that somehow my presence was the reason you were trapped in that terrible depression. I knew you weren’t going to be able to move on until I left. So I did. And it was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do, leaving like that and not knowing if you were going to be alright.” He turned back around and a small smile finally pulled at his lips. “Clearly, I shouldn’t have doubted you.”

The corner of her eyes were damp. “There’s been plenty of reason to doubt me. I got my crew lost 70,000 light years from home. Three days into my first command.”

He stepped closer to her and gently held her by the upper arms. “You see, these are the details I haven’t learned even though I’ve been with you for two days now. Stop looking for yourself, Kathryn. At least for a little while. Spend some time with me and let’s get to know each other again.”

She stared at him blankly. Voyager’s mission was to get home, not to find their supposedly dead former Captain. Janeway could feel her heart beating in her chest. It sounded like a clock, counting down the moments until Chakotay called off the search for her.

“Justin, we’ll have plenty of time to get to know each other again. If my crew finds me, and us, we’ll have 65 years while we try to get home. If they can’t, and I end up following you to wherever you’ve been the last 15 years, then I gather we’ll have all eternity to catch up.” This comment brought no smile to his face, no change in his expression. She put her hand on her hip and closed her eyes, pinching the bridge of her nose. “My priority is communicating with my crew.”

“Fine,” he acquiesced. “Then at least take your mind off the problem for a little while. Would you want to come with me, explore this new existence with me? The break might do you good.”

She did need to rest and the idea was enticing. Wherever or whatever it was, be it a new dimension, a new state of consciousness, or the afterlife, seeing it would be an opportunity to explore someplace she’d never been. If she was Odysseus, then something unknown to explore was her sirens’ song.

The sirens had nearly killed Odysseus, she recalled. And leaving Voyager, even for a little while, might mean giving up an opportunity to be found.

“No,” she told him firmly.

Tighe crossed his arms. “Kathryn—“

“Doctor to Captain Chakotay.” Janeway’s head swung around, effectively ending her bickering with Tighe. The Doctor wouldn’t have commed Chakotay if it weren’t important, hopefully something related to her disappearance. She stepped up to the main level of the bridge and closer to the comm panel at Chakotay’s seat where she could hear the Doctor.

“Sir, you asked to be notified when we’d completed our preparations. You can come down to sickbay whenever you’re ready.”

“I’ll be right there.” Chakotay stood slowly, gave the bridge to Tuvok, and headed for the turbolift. Janeway glanced back at Tighe, who didn’t move. 

Alone, Janeway followed Chakotay into the lift. She hadn’t known what the ‘preparations’ the Doctor had referred to were. But as the lift descended decks tears began to well in her first officer’s eyes. Her hand went to her mouth; in three years, including their time on New Earth, she’d never seen him cry.

Whatever the reason for his visit to sickbay was, it wasn’t good.

The lift slowed. She watched Chakotay dry his eyes with the back of his hand and straighten up as they exited. He walked the few paces to sickbay where the Doctor greeted him, saying only, “Take as much time as you need, sir.”

Her body lay on the main biobed. Chakotay quietly thanked the Doctor. Then he deactivated him.

Janeway’s hope of returning to her crew evaporated like water on a hot skillet as Chakotay approached her body and slowly rested his warm hand on her cold one. Even though they were alone, he spoke quietly, and only for her.

“You knew how much you mattered to me. Yet I never said the words. I wish I had.” He took the stiff hand of her lifeless body and squeezed it. “So I’m saying those words now. I love you, Kathryn. And I’ll get our people home, if it’s the last thing I do.” 

Janeway’s lips trembled and she felt herself drowning in a churning sea of regret. Suddenly aware of a presence at her side, Tighe’s voice pulled her violently out of the waves of melancholy.

“Well, Short Stuff, now I know why you’re in no hurry to leave with me.” 


End file.
